Book details

Book description

J. G. Ballard - author of Crash and Empire of the Sun - explores the extremes of ecology and feminism in this highly acclaimed modern fable.

Dr Barbara Rafferty is a fearless conservationist, determined to save a rare albatross from extinction. Her crusade gains widespread coverage when earnest young environmentalist Neil Dempsey is shot during an ill-fated attempt to rescue the bird from its Pacific island habitat, Saint-Esprit.

Support for the conservationists grows and well-wishers flock to the island, bringing with them specimens of other endangered creatures to be protected by Dr Barbara and her crew. The island seems a new Eden.

But is the intense Dr Barbara as altruistic as she appears? Why are the islanders committing acts of self-sabotage? And what's keeping Neil alive while the other men sicken?

A classic exploration of the extremes of human behaviour from J. G Ballard, this is a brilliantly unsettling novel in which all preconceptions are overthrown. 'Ballard is a magician of the contemporary scene and a literary saboteur. Rushing to Paradise is a Wellsian drama of extremity and isolation…No one else writes with such enchanted clarity or strange power' Guardian

'Pure Ballard. I read it with rapt fascination…Wonderful' William Boyd

'Robinson Crusoe in reverse. Teasing and sardonic…Ballard at his best' Independent on Sunday J. G. Ballard was born in 1930 in Shanghai. After internment in a civilian prison camp, his family returned to England in 1946. His 1984 bestseller Empire of the Sun won the Guardian Fiction Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. His controversial novel Crash was made into a film by David Cronenberg. His autobiography Miracles of Life was published in 2008, and a collection of interviews with the author, Extreme Metaphors, will be published in 2012. J. G. Ballard passed away in 2009.